War and Peace vocabulary

When he had betaken himself to the women’s apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members of the privy council,

James Joyce. Ulysses

---

Natasha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase,

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: 07 (Book Seven)

---

I, having vainly begged the wilful girl to rise and remove her wet things, left him preaching and her shivering, and betook myself to bed with little Hareton, who slept as fast as if everyone had been sleeping round him.

Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)

---

and I saw it written, as it were, in the falls of the cobwebs from the centre-piece, in the crawlings of the spiders on the cloth, in the tracks of the mice as they betook their little quickened hearts behind the panels, and in the gropings and pausings of the beetles on the floor.

Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)

---

two cats, of a greedy and vituperative turn, entering at a hole in the wall, leaped up with a flourish a la Catalani, and alighting opposite one another on my visage, betook themselves to indecorous contention for the paltry consideration of my nose.

Edgar Allan Poe. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4: Loss of Breath (1832)